Capital Prep's Steve Perry to step down next year to run charter school group

HARTFORD — Steve Perry, the outspoken principal of Capital Preparatory Magnet School, is stepping down at the end of the academic year, school officials confirmed Tuesday.

Superintendent Beth Schiavino-Narvaez said in a letter to parents this week that Perry was leaving as principal at Capital Prep, the school he helped start in 2005, to run his charter management group and a network of schools that are expected to open in the coming years under the Capital Prep brand.

Perry's Capital Preparatory Schools Inc. received approval from the State Board of Education to open a charter school in Bridgeport next fall, and there are plans to expand to Harlem. Perry, a public speaker and author who has openly derided teachers' unions, registered the business in 2012.

"As we say thank you to Principal Perry for his service to the Hartford Public Schools, we will engage you in finding the next leader of the school whose responsibility it will be to not only sustain the success but build upon it," Narvaez wrote. "During this period of transition ... I want to assure you that the district's relationship with Capital Prep and its support of the school will not change."

Perry did not have an immediate comment when reached Tuesday night.

The announcement comes after apparent tension between Perry and district administrators over Capital Prep's direction. His charter group had offered to manage the city magnet school, but it was rebuffed by Hartford school leaders, according to a Nov. 19 letter from Perry that was posted online by the school's parent-teacher organization.

"I have offered to continue to lead Capital Prep as we expand," the letter stated. "Yes, for $1 our nonprofit has proposed to keep our school's founders together but Hartford's new superintendent Dr. Beth Narvaez and school board are not supporting our efforts to continue to run the school that we have made into one of the most successful in America.

"Their expectation is that at the end of this school year we walk away [and] they will take responsibility for operating Capital Prep, starting with selecting a new principal. ... When we go to expand," Perry's letter continued, "they intend to take over our school."

Narvaez, who began her tenure in July, could not be reached for comment late Tuesday. Capital Prep, a year-round pre-kindergarten-to-grade 12 school on Main Street, has a social justice theme and enrolls city and suburban students through the Sheff v. O'Neill desegregation agreement.

Last fall, the Hartford school board declined to move forward with a controversial, state-endorsed plan that would have allowed Perry's group to manage Capital Prep and nearby SAND Elementary School. The city teacher's union and some SAND parents portrayed the proposal as a corporate takeover, while Perry supporters defended him and praised Capital Prep as a model school.

After the board's decision, Perry wrote on his Twitter account: "The only way to lose a fight is to stop fighting. All this did was piss me off. It's so on. Strap up, there will be head injuries."

In the ensuing firestorm, Perry described the tweet as "a metaphor about hard struggle" and a "joke" that was taken too seriously by his critics.

Narvaez said Capital Prep's school governance council would have a role in the hiring process for Perry's successor.

"Please join me in wishing Dr. Perry well in his new endeavor, and I look forward to the continued success of Capital Prep," she wrote in the letter to parents.